When K.V. Switzer filled out her application to run the Boston Marathon, she wasn't being secretive; that was how Kathrine Switzer signed her name. The first woman to run the Marathon, she had help in fending off the race official who tried to remove her.

Crooked River, Valerie Geary's debut novel, is a coming-of-age-story, a ghost story, and a literary tale of psychological suspense told in the alternating voices of 15-year-old Sam and her 10-year-old sister Ollie.

All of TIGHAR artifacts can be quite easily proven to be nothing to do with Amelia Earhart, which is unsurprising considering that their theory makes no logical sense. Earhart's radio messages from just before she disappeared show clearly that she was in the general vicinity of her destination.

Amelia Earhart buffs might be surprised to learn that the remains of her aircraft, widely reported to have gone down off Howland Island in the South Pacific, made it all the way across the Pacific Ocean to the Santa Monica Bay, where it was only recently rediscovered and successfully raised from the ocean floor by the artist Dan Van Clapp.

Where is the missing plane? Each day dawns bright, and with it, a new theory. Some are ominous. The transponders disabled, the crew complicit. The flight path reprogrammed via an on board computer. Houses are searched, conspiracies forwarded.

Amelia Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, disappeared over the Pacific in 1937. What happened to them? There are three main hypotheses -- that is, educated guesses that can be tested through research and exploration.

The word bothered me greatly years ago, as aviatrix, a feminization of aviator, seemed to make their accomplishments parenthetical. But I think of it differently these days as I understand the women of that era were different than the men -- they had to be "more."

At a time when women and minorities were rarely seen in the cockpit of an airplane, Amelia Earhart's pioneering achievements broke the silence barrier, inspired a nation and paved the way for so many others who have followed in her path.